Carl Breeze: Flying in the Alfa

By Verity Smith:

18 March 2004

GA Motorsports are running a pair of Astras and at least one Alfa Romeo 156 this year under the Team Sureterm banner. Carl Breeze was at Donington putting some miles on the ETCC-spec Alfa, and we asked him how the testing was going:

Considering this was only our first run and that almost everybody else has been testing in Spain it's quite encouraging
Carl Breeze

It was our first run with the new Alfa today, I'm impressed that we've ended up quickest of all the ETCC cars and ahead of the SEATs. We were only 1.2 seconds from Thompson's time.

Considering this was only our first run and that almost everybody else has been testing in Spain it's quite encouraging.

How much difference is there between the Alfa and the Astra and 307s you drove last year?

The main difference between the BTCC cars and the ETCC ones is the brakes. On a circuit like this you can't really brake as deep into the corners as you'd like so you lose a bit of time. Also the suspension on these cars isn't quite as good so maybe you lose out a little bit on cornering due to that too.

So to be only 1.2 seconds is very promising for the rest of the season.

What improvements can you make between now and Thruxton?

We've got quite a lot of improvements to make before our next test. We had quite a rush to get the car ready for today so we haven't quite got all the bits on there that we'd like.

If we can get all those bits on then this should improve the car under braking and hopefully we'll go to Thruxton and have a good result.

You don't really need brakes at Thruxton though, you only need to brake once for the chicane and for the rest of the lap you're pretty much flat out. That should suit our cars: the engine's very good and we're quick in a straight line.